But the next sentence lists some hints that Tom thinks are okay - so
there's another citation that isn't the black and white decision that you
imply..

> "If you find you are hinting every other query in your system -- > something is> obviously wrong and we need to fix it. Abusing hints is not recommended, > you are just> building another RBO if you do that -- precluding the software from doing > its job. Might> as well not have an optimizer at that point.">

"every other query", "abusing hints" - I think we get the idea from this
that Tom's complain matches the fears of the Postgres developers, that if
you supply a feature some people will abuse it (as in "abusing hints"),
rather than using it with the caution it merits.

>> I will leave this futile discussion now>

Before you go, could you tell us what you would have to do as a DBA to
ensure that Postgres could calculate the correct selectivity on something
as simple as: